1908.] Composition of Herbage of Pastures. 735 



In view of the great importance of grazing in Great Britain, 

 and especially in view of the increasing areas which have been 

 laid down to grass during the last thirty 

 Composition of the' years, it is remarkable that so little 

 Herbage of Pastures, attention has been given to the com- 

 position of the herbage of pastures. 

 With a view to throwing some light on the question an investiga- 

 tion was made by Mr. S. F. Armstrong of Cambridge University 

 Department of Agriculture, into the composition of several 

 types of pasture and meadow land, notably some excellent 

 old pastures in the Market Harborough district of Leicester 

 and Northampton. The method adopted was to measure the 

 relative proportions of surface occupied by the different species, 

 by which means it was considered that a good approximation 

 to the true composition of the herbage could be obtained. 

 A full account of the investigation is given in the Journal of 

 Agricultural Science (December 1907). The more important 

 points may be summarised as follows : — 



(1) That white clover and rye grass form by far the greater 

 part of the herbage of the best grazing lands — both old and 

 recent in the English Midlands — and that the next most 

 abundant species on these pastures are usually crested dogstail, 

 florin {A. stolonifera), and rough-stalked meadow grass. 



(2) That the herbage of the inferior types of grass land in 

 the same districts consists very largely of bent grass (A . vulgaris) 

 and various weeds, while white clover and rye grass are present 

 in comparatively small quantities. 



(3) That the only other species of grasses which are 

 occasionally abundant in these pastures are cocksfoot and 

 sheep's fescue in the better fields, Yorkshire fog and tufted hair- 

 grass in the poorer ones. 



(4) That the herbage of a pasture varies botanically to a 

 considerable extent during a season, this variation being, 

 however, determined very largely by soil, situation and 

 weather. 



(5) That the choicest grazing land is invariably associated 

 with soil rich in available phosphates. 



(6) That on soils suitable for permanent pasture, inferiority 

 of the herbage is generally due either to (1) a deficiency of 

 available phosphates, or (2) to their bad mechanical condition. 



